Tudors

After spending six weeks watching Mark Rylance do the best "I'm glum but determined and actually a lot smarter than you imagine" face, whilst also never fully closing his eyes, I now feel totally qualified to pass comment on all things Tudor.

Now, historian Lauren Mackay has looked afresh at Chapuys' letters, returning to his actual words, to decipher exactly what he did have to say. And what he didn't. What emerges in this new book about the Tudor court is a complex diplomatic picture of a lively and clever man who defies the stereotypes perpetuated in some history books to shine as he takes centre stage.

By her own confession, philosopher Susan Bordo is obsessed with Anne Boleyn. The very cover of her new book alerts the reader to the fact they are about to experience something more than straightforward history.

As every vaguely attentive schoolboy knows, King Harold Godwinson was killed by an arrow to the eye at the battle of Hastings in 1066, it was Sir Walter Raleigh who first introduced tobacco to England in the late sixteenth century and the period of history stretching from 1485 to 1603 is commonly referred to as the Tudor dynasty.